“Girl,” her mother had told her two weeks before her due date, “you need to stop all that crying and get ready to have this baby.”
Her ex-boyfriend’s mom called after the video went viral of the teacher hitting the student. “One of my friends from church called me,” said the woman who would have been her mother-in-law. “She asked me, Isn’t that your grandson’s school in Holloway?”
The two of them talked, and Marchand’s grandmother offered Keisha the use of her address to get Marchand into the Berkeley public schools. They had much better test scores, and Berkeley was the first district in the US to voluntarily desegregate in the 1960s. They wouldn’t have crazy racist white teachers hitting the kids.
The mother-in-law put Keisha’s name on her energy bill to document her residency, and Keisha breathed a sigh of relief.
But when she went in to the district office to figure out how to register her son for school, there was much more documentation required.
All proofs must be current originals (issued within the last 2 months) imprinted with the name and current Berkeley residential address of the parent/legal guardian. A student can have only one residency for purposes of establishing residency.
Only personal accounts will be accepted (No care of, DBA, or business accounts).
Group A:
__ Utility bill. (Must provide entire bill)
__ PG&E
__ Landline phone (non-cellular)
__ EBMUD
__ Internet
__ Cable
Group B:
__ Current bank statement (checking or savings only)
__ Action letter from Social Services or government agency (cannot be property or business)
__ Recent paycheck stub or letter from employer on official company letterhead confirming residency address
__ Valid automobile registration in combination with valid automobile insurance
__ Voter registration for the most recent past election or the most recent upcoming election
Group C:
__ Rental property contract or lease, with payment receipt (dated within 45 days)
__ Renter’s insurance or homeowner’s insurance policy for the current year
__ Current property tax statement or property deed
Keisha was bewildered by the list. She wouldn’t even be able to document her actual address in Holloway, let alone her baby daddy’s mother’s address in Berkeley.
As she stood there in the empty entryway for the Berkeley Unified School District, a mother and daughter walked in, a matching pair of strawberry blondes. The mother was talking on the phone, pulling the girl behind her. “...Which is exactly what I told him,” the woman was saying. “The rest of the PTA needs to get involved, because this is absolutely unacceptable. Hold on—” The woman stopped in her tracks and the girl, who was looking off into space, nearly collided with her. The woman turned to Keisha. “Where’s the Excellence Program office?” she demanded.
Keisha blinked, confused. “I don’t work here,” she said.
The woman stared at her for a moment, taking in Keisha’s multicolored extensions, tight jeans, and low-cut top. Then she turned away without a word, and put the phone back to her ear. “Where did you say the office was?” she asked whoever was on the other end, and headed down the corridor, dragging the girl behind her.
The strawberry-blond woman was the only parent Keisha saw that day. Obviously, this white lady wasn’t going to let her daughter get smacked by a teacher. Or go to an underperforming school. Keisha was determined to beat the list.
At work, she cancelled her direct deposit, and started having her paychecks sent to her mother-in-law’s house. It was incredibly inconvenient to have to take public transportation across three cities twice a month to get her check two days later than usual. Yet she and Marchand managed it, and his grandmother was delighted to see more of him.
But the rental agreement? That had proven to be the most difficult to fake.
“Number seventy-two?” The full-figured woman behind the counter at the Berkeley Unified School District office had large brown eyes, a neat bob hairstyle, and a weary smile.
Keisha stepped forward with her paperwork. After the look the strawberry-blond mom had given her last time, she’d had her braids done without colors and dressed in her interview suit. She wanted to look like she worked in San Francisco’s financial district or Silicon Valley. Like someone who could afford a two-bedroom apartment.
But now it was registration. The district office was full of Berkeley parents wearing jeans and T-shirts, cotton separates, and ethnic fabrics. Keisha felt overdressed. Still, she filled out the various forms to enroll Marchand in second grade.
When the woman called Keisha up to the counter, she pulled out her paperwork with what she hoped looked like confidence. Marchand’s birth certificate, her driver’s license, and each of the required documents from the list. Two were real, but the third one was the forgery.
The woman inspected each of them carefully. Keisha’s heart beat hard as the administrator’s sharp eyes got to the rental contract. As the seconds ticked by, Keisha grew increasingly certain the woman would call her a fake, or worse yet, call the police. Could she be arrested for this? But just as she began to brace for the worst, the woman smiled and said she would make copies for the file.
Keisha smiled back, relief washing over her.
The woman brought back the originals, stamped her copy of the registration form, and stapled it to a packet of papers. They were in.
Two months later, she got a letter at Marchand’s grandma’s house that the boy had been assigned to Frederick Douglass Elementary.
The first day of school dawned overcast and chilly, like so many Bay Area August mornings. Keisha and Marchand rode a BART train and a bus to Frederick Douglass. It took longer than expected, and they arrived twenty minutes after the start of school. Keisha found Marchand’s name on a list and hurried him down the hall to room 126.
The hallway was wide and bright, with daylight streaming in through the windows. At their old school in Holloway, there were always late families rushing in, parents hissing at their kids about what they should have done to be on time. But this school’s corridors were quiet and orderly. Keisha vowed to catch a much earlier train. She would get Marchand to school on time from now on.
The numbers of the classrooms were getting higher. Room 118. Room 120. Along the hallway wall hung a big banner that read, Every Month Is Black History Month, between pictures of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.
When they got to Room 126, there was a poster of Frederick Douglass on the door.
Marchand tugged on Keisha’s hand. “Mommy,” he asked, “do they sometimes hit the kids here too?”
“Oh no, baby.” She kneeled so she could get down to his level, and put one hand under his chin. “Nobody gets hit here,” she said, glancing up at Frederick Douglass. It was the classic unsmiling portrait in a bow tie, with his salt-and-pepper hair combed back and a dark goatee. “That’s why Mommy worked so hard to get you into a good school. Now come on, sugar, we got to get you into your class.”
She opened the door with an apology in her mouth — full of late BART train and I promise to do better — but she was startled into silence. Twenty-three faces turned to her, expectantly. All of them were white.